Gender Schema Theory

Gender Schema- building blocks of knowledge that contain information about a gender.

Gender schemas develop with age, from the age of 2. Children know their sex and identify other people. They learn about gender from experiences. They are rigid when we are younger but they get more flexible as we grow up we gain more experience and knowledge about the other gender so our views become less stereotypical.

Some children are highly gender schematized (where gender is an important way of thinking about the world os information is organised into which is appropriate for each gender.